As of the third quarter of 2012, over one billion people are using smartphones worldwide, and the number is expected to double by 2015. A significant percent of these users are combining their everyday digital lifestyle with paper habits at their work, home and leisure time. One of the main advantages offered by the traditional pen & paper paradigm is the ability of quick, high resolution handwriting on a compact physical medium resulting in a persistent original note with a limited and targeted distribution. Because of the high ink capturing resolution, the density of handwritten information entered even on a small paper sticker or a card may exceed by a great margin the same on existing tablets or smartphones with much larger screens. While graphical resolution of modern displays, such as Apple Retina Display, is approaching physiological limits and makes these displays, in terms of content rendering, virtually as good as high quality paper publications, this may not apply to a relatively low tablet resolution for capturing handwriting, especially on capacitive mass market screens. Additionally, user writing on tablet screens suffers from glossy surfaces, unwieldy pens with imprecise positioning, etc. This is contrasted by a satisfying experience of writing on paper. Additionally, paper documents possess trusted authentication and authorization capabilities due to unique biometric parameters of human handwriting. This includes personal signatures, such as found on paper checks and on many important forms.
Numerous attempts have been made to bridge traditional note capturing with the electronic culture. Companies like Acecad, Anoto, EPOS, Wacom, Waltop and many other technology and product vendors have developed devices and methods for instant digitizing of handwriting and drawings from a traditional paper and for capturing handwritten documents in the electronic form using a variety of acoustic, infra-red, optical, electromagnetic and other technologies. Still, in spite of significant advances, interactive digital pen and paper technologies have found a limited market adoption.
Growing shipment volumes of camera-enabled smartphones and the proliferation of personal content management systems and software with storing, advanced processing and search capabilities for digital images, such as implemented in the Evernote service and software developed by Evernote Corporation of Redwood City, Calif., make photographing handwritten documents a ubiquitous and preferred method of synthesis of paper based materials with the paperless lifestyle. The combination of paper supply recognizable from photographs with handwritten notes taken on such paper brings new ways of interaction between physical and digital worlds. The question remains, however, whether such interactions could, on the one hand, facilitate access to published digital materials from the physical world of paper-based handwritten notes and, on the other hand, prevent unwanted access to published materials.
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop advanced methods of interactive uses of handwritten pages photographed on smartphones for access to digital materials.